I'm almost even afraid to bring this up. This has been real bad the last couple of months. I have been looking at planes 90* from me shooting behind me. I've even watched the tracers go well behind my plane and I think they are missing just to then get damaged or killed. tonight in the MA it was at it's worse. Showed hits on my plane from bullets being fired way behind me. I have a great connection and a high end, fairly new system. I've noticed the same goes for when I'm shooting. I have more trouble anymore hitting anything.
Just because nobody's specifically mentioned it, I thought I would.
Both in game in real time, and any time you're looking at video, the other guy's bullets and aircraft position are only an approximation. They're where your machine put them based on the information from the server, but it's not exactly what he is seeing on his end. In my experience, the incoming bullets are almost always showing behind you.
This is important because gunnery is calculated on the machine doing the shooting. In simple terms, he is shooting at his machine's approximation of your location, and based on what damage is done to your plane on his PC, that information gets relayed to the server, and then out to everybody in sight's PC who then see the bullets fire, and the damage occur.
The bottom line is, if everybody's connection is good, avoiding fire is a pretty close approximation, but at all times, it's an approximation.
Wiley.